China and Russia were demonstratively united at the “Silk Road” summit in Beijing. They want to further expand their collaboration. Chinese President Xi warned other countries not to decouple from China.
China and Russia want to further expand their cooperation. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized this during bilateral talks on the sidelines of the “Silk Road” summit in Beijing. Both countries have deepened mutual political trust and maintained strategic coordination in a close and effective manner, Xi Jinping said. The trade volume of the two countries has reached new records and is moving towards the goal of 200 billion US dollars.
A rare foreign trip for Putin
The meeting to mark the tenth anniversary of China’s Belt and Road Initiative offered a rare opportunity for Putin, who is wanted on an international arrest warrant, to travel abroad. China does not recognize the criminal court in The Hague, which is why Xi Jinping’s “good friend Putin,” as the Chinese leader repeatedly emphasized, was not arrested during his visit. On the contrary, the Russian president was courted in Beijing, and state television presented him as a guest of honor.
In his opening speech, China’s head of state and party leader praised the international infrastructure project “New Silk Road”. In the past ten years, China has spent the equivalent of several billion euros building ports, railway lines and roads around the world. Critics from abroad object that China has also tied many poorer countries to itself through loans.
Xi warns against decoupling
In his speech, Xi warned other countries not to decouple from China. He criticized international sanctions and the efforts of democracies to become more independent from the People’s Republic.
The summit can also be seen as an example of how China is increasingly isolating itself from democratically governed states and wants to present itself as a counter-model to the USA. Almost exclusively emerging countries came to the “Silk Road” summit, many of them also governed autocratically. For example, representatives of the radical Islamic Taliban from Afghanistan were among the guests.
China’s focus on the global south
“At the beginning, when the initiative was launched, there was, among other things, an attempt to involve European states,” says Moritz Rudolf, who researches at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School in the USA. “The attempt failed and the pure geographical orientation is the states of the global south, the Arab states and states in Latin America,” says Rudolf. Europe and the USA, however, played no role at all. “From a purely geopolitical point of view, it is also about further expanding Chinese influence in the states of the global south.”
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was the only participant from the EU to arrive. His meeting yesterday with Putin was viewed particularly critically.